Cedar Creek residents unsatisfied with paving project

For the past month, Cedar Creek Road residents have been dealing with a road resurfacing project that has made the artery into Cashiers dangerous to travel.

One of those residents is Edward Belcak, who has been asking the North Carolina Department of Transportation to come back and fix the road.

Belcak lives off Cedar Creek Road on Fern Lane and said NCDOT “took a serviceable paved road” and applied gravel and fog seal.

“Our cars are being damaged, the dust is terrible, the fog seal can’t take the heat, and someone paid the price for their bad judgement and totaled their car,” Belcak said. “We’ve been trying for a month to get NCDOT’s attention. While they’ve responded, it is not an acceptable response. There are a number of communities at the top of Cedar Creek Road that must use it as it is the only paved road access to U.S. 64 and in town to Cashiers. The current traffic load is heavy with a large number of dump trucks servicing the Chinquapin development. There are simply too many severe curves on the road to allow for fog seal as a workable solution.”

Since June 5, Belcak has sent emails to regional engineers within NCDOT, asking them why the road project is not going according to plan. He said he has not been satisfied with the responses he has received.

Belcak also said he and other neighbors on Cedar Creek Road were not aware of the project before it began. He said he learned of the construction when “loose gravel” and “uneven pavement” signs were placed up and down the street leading to Breedlove Road.

Because of the road construction, Belcak said the road has become a “dust bomb” when dump trucks and other vehicles travel up and down the route. He showed pictures of the dirt on the back of his Porsche and rocks that have been lodged into the car vents by the driver seat door.

Belcak is not alone when it comes to having issues with Cedar Creek Road. Lynne Keating is a resident of the Zachary Gap neighborhood on Fern Lane and said the road is not one that is lightly traveled. She said travel along the road has significantly increased in the past two years due to the Chinquapin community.

“Dump trucks have been a common sight, and the road has suffered considerable damage,” Keating said in an email. “The solution selected by NCDOT was a process known as fog seal. As I understand, it is a mixture of asphalt and water and is intended only for a short-term fix to delay actual repaving.”

She said, shortly after the fog seal was applied, temperatures outside escalated, and the black coat emulsified. As a result, she said her car has “significant streaking over the driver’s side” and the hubcaps will need special cleaning.

“To fix that problem, the NCDOT spread a layer of gravel over the road on the afternoon of Friday the 24th, leaving us with a gravel/dirt road as our only access down to [U.S.] 64. It is an unstable surface and very dirty. Pebbles are loose. Cars get filthy with dust just going down once. It is not safe to travel more than 20 mph.”

Cashiers is experiencing a lot of change, she said, and she added NCDOT and the other powers that be should recognize the town has a unique road system and the state department should engineer the surfaces accordingly.

In a June 6 email between Belcak and Jackson County Maintenance Engineer Travis Williamson, Williamson said the work being done on Cedar Creek Road is part of an asphalt preservation project. A copy of the email was obtained by the Crossroads Chronicle.

“The contractor, Emery Asphalt in Arden, is placing a double seal that consists of two independent layers of liquid asphalt and chat placed by spreader and rolled in with mechanical roller,” Williamson wrote in the email. “There will be loose material for a short period until the final application of fog seal is applied. The fog seal application will do as described ‘seal’ the loose material on the top surface.”

A few days later, on June 9, NCDOT Division Engineer Wanda Austin wrote an email to Belcak and said the AST resurfacing project is a multi-step process and is not yet fully complete. However, she told him the contractor would return to Cedar Creek Road, sweep any remaining loose stone off the roadway and spray a liquid asphalt fog seal over the entire surface.

“The fog seal will permanently adhere the remaining stone to the roadway surface and give the pavement a dark black appearance very similar to a traditional asphalt resurfacing,” Austin said. “The final product will have much improved rideability and will be more aesthetically acceptable than what is currently in place.”

She said AST resurfacing allows the state department to extend the life of secondary roadways at a cost “much less than traditional asphalt resurfacing,” which allows workers to impact more miles of roadway per year on limited funding.

In another email, Williamson said the application adds longevity to the existing pavement schedule that is currently in place by sealing the final wearing surface to stop any water that enter through fatigue cracking.

“The cracking may be a result of heavy traffic, poor subgrade and primarily due to the high elevation freeze thaw cycle during the adverse winter weather months associated with Western NC,” Williamson wrote. “This product extends the life of an existing hot mix asphalt roadway. These roads are rated yearly to determine based on traffic count and existing condition for qualifications.”

Williamson said the project is funded through Raleigh for counties across the state and is being administered by the Whittier field office. Other roads in Jackson County are also part of the project.

On the afternoon of June 27, the Cashiers-Glenville Fire Department and Jackson County Sheriff’s Office responded to an overturned vehicle near the Cedar Creek Club and the intersection of the road with U.S. 64. No injuries were reported.

“[The applied gravel and fog seal] failed in the modest 82-degree heat last week,” Belcak wrote in a June 28 email to state Sen. Kevin Corbin and state Rep. Mike Clampitt. “At the end of the week, they reapplied gravel and left us a mess for the weekend before the 4th. Yesterday, they met and told us everything is fine. Well, it isn’t. Yesterday afternoon, police, fire and EMTs were attending an overturned car in a ditch that apparently slid on the gravel. I’ve [a] four-wheel drive car but can’t safely exceed 20 mph. Others have experienced the same dangerous conditions.”

NCDOT District Engineer Chris Lee said the department relies on this type of surface treatment to preserve the secondary road system. Belcak argues that Cedar Creek is not a secondary road with the amount of traffic it has been getting in the past few years.

“The cost to AST Cedar Creek Road was approximately $91,000 and was chosen because the road surface was in a reasonably good condition for preservation type treatments,” Lee said. “Alternatively, an adjacent route, Breedlove Road, is scheduled to be resurfaced this season with standard hot mix asphalt at a cost of nearly $600,000. Breedlove Road’s condition was too poor to consider a preservation treatment due to full-depth structural issues. Using preservation treatments such as AST significantly reduces the frequency of applying hot mix asphalts to the thousands of secondary road lane miles the department is responsible for.”

Belcak submitted the issue to Gov. Roy Cooper on June 27 and is awaiting a response.

- By Michael O'Hearn/Crossroads Chronicle